To be released in 2014; Directed by Tony Sebastian Ukpo
Starring Haruka Abe, Eke Chukwu, Junichi Kajioka
"From the dust to the great beyond, only we remain"
"1st film in a series of science fiction films from the Earth Future timeline created by Tony Sebastian Ukpo. All the films are set within the same universe and refer to each other, though differing in story, characters, and genre"
This highly anticipated Sci-fi is on my short list of must-see movies this year. In 2458 man is slowly rebuilding itself from the ruins, and out of the rubble come many different stories, and fates, like Babel. Three such fates are represented who will ultimately come together for what, well the teaser trailer and the producers are wisely mum on the details. I hate it when trailers give away the whole movie, so I'm a quick fan of the cryptic bit below. It looks a damn sight better than that Will Smith mess, anyway.
Check it out and tell your friends. And keep up with the Facebook page for more teasers and showtimes. This one looks promising.
Released in 2013, Directed by M Night Shymalan
Starring Jayden Smith, Will Smith
In the starring lineup of IMDB's casting, there's usually three actors listed. David Denman is listed as a starring lead, but he only appears for about 90 seconds. Maybe it's because he has the most interesting bit in the whole film. The rest is just Smith SR and Smith JR.
In a nutshell, this is a thousand years after the apocalypse that forced humans to leave Earth and survive in space. Soldiers become known as Rangers and Cypher Raige (Smith SR) is a hero and status symbol as one who feels no fear, rendering him invisible, a 'ghost', to monsters who can not see or hear, but can only sense fear. Kitai (Smith Jr) idolizes his father and gets top academic scores in the Ranger academy, but lacks the physical prowess to be advanced as a Ranger. His father takes him under his wing on a space mission, perhaps to sharpen his skills and help him realize his potential as Cypher's successor. Sounds good so far, but when the ship crash lands on Earth, on which they're told "everything here has evolved to kill humans", the rest of the movie's potential lies burning with the wreckage.
Father and son are the only survivors, and Cypher's legs are broken. Kitai is given a mission to find the tail and retrieve the distress beacon, since the ones in the cockpit were damaged in the crash. There's enough computer power for Cypher (I keep wanting to call him Dad) to stay in contact with his son and give one exposition after another so the viewer isn't completely lost. The only problem is, I'm probably making this movie sound much better than it is. In fact it's as predictable as anything Hollywood pumps out these days and it's basically I Am Legend all over again, with a lone Smith wandering around an abandoned Earth and pissing off everyone in the audience with his complete lack of wit or charisma.
Truth is I like M Night as a director, I thought the Last Airbender was great, and I was looking forward to seeing Jayden Smith play a lead role and see if he might be nearly as cool as his father, but twenty minutes into the movie you just want to smack the shit out of him. His father is the most respected Ranger on the force and Jayden, sorry, Kitai, constantly ignores his orders and nearly gets himself killed about every ten minutes. There's not an ounce of character development as he transgresses from stubborn apathetic pussy-wimp teenager to stubborn apathetic fearless, er, teenager. He relies completely on his hi-tech backpack and his father's advice, and you just wish he would improvise one damn thing for himself. After about 70 minutes, you still just want to smack the shit out of him because he still wont stop lying and disobeying the one guy trying to keep him alive.
Somehow, by the magic of Hollywood, the stubborn twat with the personality of a pizza box manages to evade a horde of baboons, giant birds, tigers, leeches, and I'm sorry am I spoiling it? Give me a break. It's a Hollywood movie from 2013. What would you expect besides a happy ending? This is a perfect example of why I prefer gritty family-unfriendly movies from before I was born. When Hollywood still had two big balls between W and D.
I'm not sure what amazes me more, the fact that M Night Shymalan could spend $130 million dollars on a barely 90 minute movie with barely two actors and one ship, or that one of the funniest and coolest actors of the 1990s could raise such an insufferable spoiled brat that he spends the whole movie coming across as nothing more than an insufferable spoiled brat. There's a reason this lost $70 million at the box office.
Still, if you're a big Will Smith fan, and he hasn't lost you in the last few years with crap like I am Legend, then you'll prob put this in your collection, on Blue Ray of course, so you can see where most of that $130 million went: into big fancy cameras and lots of compensating CGI.
Starring Nicole Hansen, Joe Lara, John Saint
Now this is fun. by 1993 cyborgs were probably the only thing on TV scarier than Vanilla Ice. Terminator II was the biggest baddest movie anyone could talk about, so Hollywood was ready to throw every cyborg script they had at the wall. Enter American Cyborg: Steel Warrior. It's a double-titled double-dose of terminator ripoff that's got everything you want: a post-apocalyptic wasteland, big guns, excessive use of the color blue, hookers who get their costumes from Pat Benetar videos, badass cyborgs who feel no pain, and of course, beautiful girls. In this case it's the loveable Nicole Hansen.
Nicole plays Mary, possibly the only woman alive who's able to give birth to a live child since the great war brought destruction and acid rain upon the world. Raised in an underground lab, the baby is still a fetus, kept in a stylish artificial womb(These underground rebels always have the best technology). They must get Mary and the baby across the city to the port, where friendly rebels from Europe will take the child to a safer place to be raised as a new beacon of hope for humanity.
Of course, it wont be easy. The world is run by the machines now, and the system employs cyborgs to enforce their rule. Since most of the surviving humans are sterile, the system has let them live out their misery until they go extinct, and then the cyborgs can rule the world in peace and play Sega Genesis forever. If it sounds too much like Terminator, well , just think of it like this: Did you ever watch the Robot War scenes in Terminator and wonder what it would be like to have to survive in that underground mess? Well here you go. Your wish is granted. There's plenty of raggedy clothes and silly street gangs to go around.
Right from the start Mary's friends have a plan to reach the port but they're wiped out by a single lock-jawed cyborg("the newest model!" one yells) who bears a striking resemblance to a certain Austrian cyborg, and relentlessly pursues Mary through the entire movie. If this sounds too much like Terminator, don't worry, there's more! This guy doesn't have any snappy comebacks, but he does get one of his eyes blown out.
Mary, who obviously can't last two minutes on her own, runs into loner rebel Austin, and together they make for the ocean. The chemistry between them could be a little better, but I put that on Hansen. Joe Lara plays his part well, and could have done better as an actor, but Hansen just seems removed sometimes, like it's hard to believe she's all there. The screenplay could've been better too, but hey, what do I know?
One of the most annoying things about this movie is not the T2 ripoffs, I was over that in about five minutes. It's the fact that everytime the Cyborg has the chance to just blow austin away as easily as he kills everyone else in the movie, he settles for man-to-man fisticuffs and ah, fuck it. It's fun to watch. And that's what it comes down to really, if you want a lot of action and a fair bit of suspense, and you can somehow reconcile this as a lost Terminator side story, then I think you'll enjoy American Cyborg: Steel Warrior. Give it a go, and thanks for reading.
If you like spoilers, or you've already seen the movie, check out the play by play at P.A.-UK with lots of pictures. million Monkey Theater also gets into it, linked through the banner below.
Released in 2004, Directed by Yasuaki Nakajima
Starring Velina Georgi, Zorikh LeQuidre, Jaqueline Bowman
Shot in Brooklyn this movie has been near the top of my to-watch list for some time. What's compelling about this film is the actors have no lines. It's basically a silent movie, and to top it off it's in black and white. letting the actions speak for themselves. The idea is, gasses still present in the air after the Third World War prevent anyone from speaking to each other, so one woman travels with four men as they try to navigate the rubble of the old world.
I love anything daring, and anything shot in New York, so I really can't wait to see this one.
Released in 1971, directed by Robert Wise
Starring James Olson, Arthur Hill, David Wayne
Scary, beautiful, and daring, The Andromeda Strain has a reputation for impeccable acting, storyline, and set design. While the plot of a virus that wipes everyone out save a select few who are mysteriously immune may sound as cliche as gets, this is probably the movie by which most others of that plot get their inspiration. Where 'A Boy and His Dog' inspired Mad Max, 'The Andromeda Strain' is equally influential and essential to not just the PA sub-genre, but to the Sci-Fi genre as a whole.
See, until the seventies, most sci-fi thrillers depended on bigger and bigger monsters to scare the crowd, and huge slabs of budget would be fed to these often gaudy and usually terribly designed beasts that made the movie more of a laugh-fest than a thriller. The Andromeda Strain stands the test of time and avoids feeling too dated because it succeeded in bringing a very realistic and frightening killer to the big screen: a virus. And not just any virus, but an alien life form that is so small it can only be seen by an electron microscope(which in th 70s, were pretty bulky and intimidating instruments in themselves, and leave it to the great director to surround these instruments with an equally intimidating super-lab called Wildfire).
The imagery is cold, isolating, with lots of air and space typical of seventies environments, and you really get that sense of, shit, if we don't fix this, we really will be the only ones left, and for how long no one can say.
The film is based on a story by Michael Crichton(Jurassic Park), and it's reputation marks it to Crichton as Carrie to Stephen King. So a space crew returns to Earth from a successful mission, and people start dropping like flies. Turns out they brought back something very deadly. Soon, the landscape looks like Jonestown and everyone is dead except a grumbling old alcoholic and an infant. These two are brought into the massive Wildfire Laboratory, which was built specifically for such a purpose. The casting was reportedly a determined move to avoid including too many big names and go with actors who could deliver the kind of suspense and tension this movie really needed to avoid imploding in on itself in a storm of pretentiousness. Indeed, between the great acting, Wise's direction, incredible art direction by William Tuntke(Mary Poppins, Buck Rodgers), and the palpable tension and pacing, I promise this will instantly become one of your favorite seventies films right alongside A Clockwork Orange and Serpico. It's film done right.
There was a TV series remake of this in 2008 that may or may not totally suck. So be sure you're buying the one from 1971 with the cover above, not the cover below.
This is the 2008 TV remake. Be sure you're buying the right one!
Released in 2003, directed by David DeBartolomé (as David Barto)
Starring Christopher Lambert, Kelly Brook, Lou Diamond Phillips
I love most movies with lou Diamond Philipps. He's a great actor with a really intense presence. He was one of my favorite actors in the Young Guns series. I guess he was low on work when he took this job. It's a Matrix rip, as most 80's PA films ripped off Mad Max, the Matrix was the pole to dance on after 1999.
In 2010, the population has been torn apart by a virus, and a megalo-giant corporation has an antidote, a drug called Absolon, that will keep you alive, but you must pay them, and buy it, forever. So it's not that far off from many of today's pharma-scams. like any good Hollywood trash, only one man can hope to save the world from ultimate destruction. Actually it's more like the megalo-corp kills one of it's scientists, and then gets a hair across it's ass when a cop starts to investigate (the nerve!) so they send out a bunch of hoodlums in expensive black clothes to take him down.
If you're into the 'chase me till I get to where I need to get to without getting killed by assassins or sidetracked by a stupid broad so I can save humanity', with plenty of guns and Matrix-like graphics, then by all means, jump in!
Images are snagged from Cyberpunk.com, check out their review and more on this sweet sexy website: CyberpunkReview
Released in 1975 Directed by L.Q. Jones
Starring Don Johnson, Jason Robards, Susanne Benton.
Considered one of the essential movies of the PA genre, A Boy and His Dog features one of the greatest challenges in filmmaking, or acting. That is, a lone character must carry most of the movie by himself. Fortunately it doesn't put you to sleep the way Will Smith did forty years later.
Based on the novel "A Walk in the Sun", Vic and his dog wander about a post-nuclear wasteland scrounging up whatever food they can find, and Vic being about seventeen or so, looking for any sexual relief he can get (with a human, not the dog). He seems to be psychically linked to the dog, providing some great comic relief, and the pacing is well played enough that it doesn't get too boring. The two have a deal for survival. Vic finds the dog food, and the dog finds vic some pussy. it's like Fin and Jake without the subtlety.
Eventually Vic comes across a girl who spreads out for him and brings him to a random door in the desert, you know, the kind that someone was nice enough to pop up in the middle of nowhere with nothing around it. What could be behind the door? It could be dangerous and full of giant rats, it could be a new car! No, it's stairs. Stairs that lead down, way down underground to a community of painfully old-fashioned white people who have locked themselves under the Earth with lotsa of makeup in a sort of creepy uber-religious 1950s existence and having never allowed themselves above ground, have become sterile. Well the men have. So Vic is offered the chance of a lifetime. Stay with the freaky deakies and fuck all their girls to continue the human population. At least, they assume they're the only ones left, by the arrogance of most religious fanatics they're convinced they must be right. Vic accepts, but it's not quite what it seems.
Definitely a classic of sci-fi movies, and apparently the biggest influence of Mad Max, the crown jewel of all PA films. So if you're a fan of the genre, you kind of have to see this before you can claim the title.
Released in 1986 Directed by David Engelbach
Starring Chuck Wagner, Laurene Landon, William Wallace.
What do you get when you dump a small budget into the biggest hair and hottest amazon women you can find, and fly them all to an Iraqi desert with some horses, crossbows, a Sasquatch named Arrg the Awful, and a boom box that blasts pure 80s hard rock in a dystopian future? You get America 3000. This movie is gold. This is the kind of trashy drive-in classic I love.
"Nine hundred years after the Great Nuke. The world man created, he destroyed. Out of the darkness and ignorance of the radioactive rubble emerged a new order..." "...and the world was woggos." (in old speak that means - Crazy!)
Humans are back to primitive hunter-gatherer tribes and barely anyone knows how to read. It's come down to men vs women, and the women are in charge. They live in 'coms', and keep men for pets. If a captive man becomes a "macho", his tongue is cut out and he's forced to work, baking bread and doing hair. If there's one thing that a woman will keep alive and well in the future, it's her hair. It's totally believable ya know? Somewhere they keep a great stash of conditioner and mouse and round brushes, but they can't make a decent outfit to save their lives. So in effect they all look like dancers from a Motley Crue music video. Hot. The hunkiest and best hung men are assigned as seeders, and well, you can guess what their job is. This makes for the most awkward sex scene in b-moviedom, as the hunky man-slaves are prepped for seeding by donning a full body rubber suit like some kind of power plant rapist. There are also men called "toys" who have their tongues and balls sliced off to keep around as silent gentle workers.
We meet our two heroes Gruss and Korvis when they're about fourteen, dragged into the com on a chain gang of captured men while the Tiara walks down the line cutting off their pants and assigning their jobs. Korvis may have enjoyed being a seeder, but has no interest in being a slave. Him and Gruss soon escape, vowing to one day return and rescue and free all men.
The future language is sometimes a bit much, but it's not hard to understand. Men are 'Plugots', women are 'Frauls'. If you're good, you're 'hot plastic'. If you're dead you're 'cold'. Crazy is 'Waggos' and 'Watzit' means WTF? No one really knows who the 'prezeedent' is anymore, but everyone's sure that he or she wears a gold suit and a motorcycle helmet. No one knows what a 'Reagan' is. You learn that from the douchebag narrator who pipes in every ten minutes or so to fill in whatever plot-holes had been discovered during post-production.
One of my favorite scenes comes when Korvis discovers a presidential bunker loaded with supplies and brings them back to his man-army. Four cases of grenades, porno mags, shaving cream, lazer rifles, flares, a shiny gold radiation suit, and a giant 80's boom box that's pre-loaded with both extra loud 80s metal(because that's what the prezeedent must've liked), and on side B, 'presidential' entry music! One of the men they rescued, the misplaced wookie Arrg the Awful, finds himself a can of deodorant and couldn't be happier. Neither can his roommates. Of course, old technology was thought to be cursed, perhaps explaining the primitive lifestyle after 900 years. So they don't really figure out how to work the grenades until one guy cleverly pulls the pin and explodes himself. Oh, that's what they do!
Chuck Wagner plays Korvis (Warming him up for his role in The Sisterhood a few years later), leader of the men. He comes face to face with the sexy Laurene Landon, who plays Venu, "Tiara" of the amazon "Frisco Com". They fight it out in surprisingly well-shot and entertaining batle scenes, until Korvis scores an interesting advantage, and that's as much as I'll say without getting past the twenty minute mark. Basically we're talking big, big hair, plenty of wit, and good pacing that avoids getting slow like so many 80s movies. This is definitely recommended.
PS check out the painting below, the hot babe is actually an impression of Nate's wife from Million Monkey Theater! Have a laugh with his review as well.
Released in 1994 Directed by Philip J roth
Starring Richard Keats, Mitchell Cox, Lisa Ann Russell.
In 2073 a hot shot time-travel scientist sends a probe back to 1973 only to alter the Earth's history which suddenly becomes ravaged by killer robots that look way cool but can't aim for shit. Now Sinclair and his gang of tuff guys have to fight the robots and somehow prevent the rampaging apocalypse they've brought upon themselves.
This straight-to-video schlock flick is often called a Terminator ripoff, with less plot and more guns. Yea, more guns than Terminator. More fire, more explosions, more robots. If you can find it, it'll probably only be on VHS.
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